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Voices: Visa as diplomatic weapon

John Lennon. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Mexican artist Diego Rivera. Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat. Communists. The United States has a long history of denying, or complicating, visa

The United States has a long history of denying, or seriously complicating, visa requests from foreigners for a wide range of political reasons. But Thursday's announcement by the White House that it's imposing visa restrictions on Russians and Ukrainians involved in "threatening the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine" opens the door to a broader ban that has rarely been used.

"Individuals have been denied visas for diplomatic reasons. Small groups," says Marc Rosenblum of the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank that studies migration around the globe. "But this is unusual."

The most vivid examples of America denying visas to people from particular countries stem from clear national security concerns.

Getting a visa from the Soviet Union during the peak of the Cold War was no easy task. The U.S. cracked down on visas for Iranians during, and after, the hostage crisis. And while South Koreans received 90,927 visas in 2012, the bellicose threats from North Korea resulted in its citizens receiving just 87.

But the U.S. has traditionally used smaller, more targeted visa denials to make its point.

In 2009, the State Department barred members of the Honduran interim government from visiting the U.S. after then-President Manuel Zelaya was captured and escorted out of the country following a coup. The U.S. denied visas to government officials in Belarus following the violent crackdown on demonstrators following the country's disputed December, 2010, election.

The U.S. has been accused of denying visas to foreign dignitaries simply trying to attend United Nations events in New York City, from the Sudanese president to members of the cabinet of Venezuela's president. Narendra Modi, an Indian politician who could become the country's new prime minister in the upcoming elections there, has been fighting to reinstate his visa since it was revoked by U.S. officials in 2005.

Stephen Pattison, an immigration attorney who spent 28 years working for the State Department, says it's unlikely that President Obama would institute a country-wide ban of Russian citizens. But he said the wording of Thursday's announcement purposefully leaves open the possibility of barring large groups of people in order to clearly convey the government's displeasure with the situation in Ukraine.

Muralist Diego Rivera.(Photo: AP)

"Who does it apply to?" Pattison asks. "Ethnic Ukrainians? People in the Russian government? Are they going to try to point the finger beyond a few individuals and be more broad brushed?"

He sees the threat of visa denials as one of a limited number of diplomatic tools the U.S. government has to convince Russia to halt its operations in Crimea.

"The idea here is a shot across the bow, to send a signal, an expression of displeasure, in a situation where we don't have a lot of arrows in our quiver," Pattison says.

Considering that more than 200,000 Russians a year visit America on temporary visas, that could prove to be one substantial arrow indeed.